The Journey Beyond
by moonlighten
Summary: Despite the words inscribed on his skin, Robert Sugden doesn't believe in soulmarks. [Part 1 of the Journey Beyond soulmate AU series. Complete.]
1. Chapter 1

This s a trope I've never attempted before in a fandom I've never written in, and I'm a little nervous about posting as a consequence... But here goes!

(I don't usually post chapters this short, either, but... nervous and testing the waters!)  
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Robert doesn't believe in soulmarks.

The physical reality of them is impossible to ignore – the mark is undeniably there, inscribed distinct and dark-edged across his skin – but he can't think of them as anything other than ridiculous.

Because they don't mean anything, not really. They're not the first words, or the last words, or even the most important words, but just something that someone, somewhere might say to you. If you're lucky enough to meet them, that is, and most people aren't, because that someone lives on the other side of the world, they don't take that one, fateful call, or they look to the left when they should have looked right.

And even then, most of the marks spell out inanities, common-place greetings and hackneyed phrases that their bearer might hear a hundred times in a day, never mind a lifetime, but those who have met their soulmate insist that it sounds and feels different when spoken by their other half, although no-one's ever been able to explain _how_ to Robert's satisfaction.

There have been hundreds of studies performed by universities and hospitals and research institutions, measuring heart rates and brainwaves, hormone fluctuations and endorphin levels, but the results are never conclusive and nothing's ever been proven. He's meant to take it on faith that the words are meaningful, but Robert just _can't_. He can't believe that there's some mystical, unknowable force out there, playing cryptic matchmaker.

The idea is ridiculous. Laughable.

But still he'd checked every inch of his skin every morning when he was younger, as all children did – a mirror propped up against his pillow, twisting his body and craning his neck to try and catch the reflection of the back of his neck, the base of his spine – waiting and watching and hoping for the words to start to resolve themselves from the midst of the freckles that already peppered his body.

When they finally come, one otherwise uneventful day when he's thirteen, he decides he doesn't _want_ to believe.  
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Although they're always words, the marks can still take many forms.

Some are so minuscule they're barely even legible, a cramped scrawl clustered inside the crease of a palm or the laughter lines at the corner of an eye, and some are writ large in elegant copperplate, covering entire limbs.

Some are faint, some are bold. Most are monochrome, but a rare few are rainbow-hued, or shimmer and shine as though the bearer's flesh has been inlaid with a precious metal.

Those are works of art, and proudly displayed for the most part with clothes carefully cut to reveal or emphasise them, especially if the words themselves are particularly romantic or poetic.

The letters that make up Robert's mark are jagged and spindly, stark black against the pale skin of his forearm. Unlovely, and the sentiment they spell out is even uglier.

When they'd first appeared, Robert had tried to scrub them out, but the rush of blood to his skin had simply made them stand out even more strongly.

Nowadays, he wears long sleeves whenever he can, and when he can't, he keeps moving, keeps misdirecting, and he's become so adept at such deliberate diversions that even when the mark's bared, no-one can read it.  
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* * *

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He used to think it must be Katie.

She must have said the words – or, at least, a part of them – in and amongst the confusion and chaos and anger of everything that happened between them, but, if she did, Robert did not recall it with any clarity, which he supposes is an answer in and of itself.

He definitely never felt a flash of that indefinable, indescribable sensation of rightness he's been promised, however, which made him even more inclined to think it doesn't actually exist.  
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* * *

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When he isn't careful, or quick, or dexterous enough and someone sees, they don't tend to look at the mark for long.

They would usually wince and turn their head aside, and sometimes they'd then give  
him sympathy, more often they seem to pity him, but most of the time, they try to reason that the words must have some different meaning which would become clear the moment he heard them. That the tone of his soulmate's voice, a turn of their expression, would make them sound like a joke, perhaps. Teasing. Loving in a way they were hard pressed to define, but were nonetheless quite adamant about, all the same.

Katie hadn't thought that, though. Nor had Andy. A decade back, he had taunted Robert with the words. Said they couldn't possibly mean anything else, because of course, _of course_ , Robert would find away to ruin his soulbond, too.

And his first night with Chrissie, she'd traced the letters with the very tip of one well-manicured nail, her bottom lip caught up between her teeth; slow and thoughtful.

"I can't imagine ever saying this to you," she'd said, and there had been an edge of unease to her voice, a pensive furrow nicking her brow.

Because there was nothing comforting about the mark; nothing encouraging. In the strength of her conviction, there was only one inescapable conclusion: either she wasn't his soulmate, or else she was, and there was still _that_ , looming large, dreadful, and inevitable in their as yet undecided future. Fated, if she did believe in such things, for destruction right from the start.

Normally, and with other people, it would be just one night. Robert wouldn't care and it wouldn't be important, but Chrissie _matters_ , and he wants _them_ to matter. He can't hide the mark away now, and he can't make her unread it, but he can try to make her forget, and, hopefully, keep on forgetting.

He kisses her again, deeper than before, and draws her back down against scattered pillows and passion-warmed sheets, offering his body up as a much-needed distraction.


	2. Chapter 2

Chrissie's mark is written in a smooth and fluid cursive, flowing up the gentle curves of the inside of her left leg. A flowery French endearment in sepia tones, accents aigu and grave speckled like beauty marks at the dip of her knee.

His mark has no place in their bed, but Robert follows the ladder of her letters with his lips, sounding them out slowly against her skin.

It wouldn't work even if they were soulmates, or so the received wisdom goes, because they have to be unthinkingly spoken, spontaneous and from the heart. He tries anyway, just in case. Everyone does.

At the final, flourished 's', he smiles up at Chrissie. "Anything," he asks, cocking a brow.

The smile and the question are both nonchalantly given, but his chest tightens, growing heavy with the trapped air of a caught breath and a heart that feels to have stilled on a suspended beat.

Because even though Chrissie calls herself foolish for it, she has admitted that there's always a tiny flutter of nervous anticipation deep in her belly whenever she visits France. That, despite herself, she can't help but listen out for her words and hope in every café and on every street.

"Well." Chrissie draws the word out like a sigh, and she punctuates it with a lazy roll of her hips. "It's definitely _something_."

And it isn't the best answer, or the easiest, but it's a good one, and one Robert can work with.  
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* * *

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Robert's only ever met one pair who had claimed to be soulbonded.

They'd been friends of his grandmother, who'd emigrated to Spain to while away their retirement years in warmer climes and more salubrious surroundings than Hull.

He may have been a little too young to truly appreciate the intricacies of their relationship, but it had seemed to him that they were no different to any other couple in the twilight years of a long marriage. They'd still bickered, sometimes argued, and complained about each other's foibles to near anyone who would listen.

It had been a disappointing realisation, shattering almost, that all of those films and songs and books that espoused the idea that a soulbond was something sublime, transcendental, must be lies, or at least wishful thinking.

Mr and Mrs Taylor had just been two imperfect people, imperfectly together, with no outward sign that they had smoothed one another's rough edges and filled up all the empty spaces inside themselves.

Even if the marks really were anything other than a strange quirk of genetics, the vaunted bond more than the mix of attraction, familiarity, compromise and habit that people usually termed love, it didn't particularly look like something Robert wanted to strive for.  
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It wasn't even something that was guaranteed to last.

Robert's father had told him that, when Robert was still small enough to be seated on his knee.

His father's mark had run across the back of his knuckles, three words in Italian on each hand which only became a full sentence when he pressed them together, thumb to thumb and fists closed.

Only when Robert was older and knew more of his father's history did he begin to wonder whether that advice hadn't just been the same old saw, often repeated even in fairy stories as a cautionary tale, but personal knowledge born from bitter experience.

It had been the end of a long day, the fire burning low and his father's voice dragging tiredly when he'd told him, "Sometimes it isn't enough. Sometimes, other things are more important, and you have to leave anyway."

And he had left Italy, come home to the farm and soil ground down into his skin so deeply that the delicate brushstrokes that made up his mark were hidden from view more often than not.

After that night, they didn't talk of it again. Robert never thought to ask, and his father never offered to tell.  
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Andy's soulmark had appeared two months before Robert's own.

The letters are blood red, short and narrow, and as regularly formed as a typeface. They form the words 'Goodbye, Andy' and from a distance, look like nothing more than a dotted line encircling the base of his throat – 'please cut here' – a combination of circumstance which Robert has always found morbidly amusing.

And despite the fact that Andy's words are so straightforward, so unambiguous and commonplace, he hadn't questioned for a moment that Katie was the one who had spoken them at just the right time and in just the right way.

Robert had asked him how the hell he could be so sure, and Andy had replied, 'You'll know if it ever happens to you, Rob,' in that same infuriatingly vague way that everyone else did.

Andy had shrugged then, clearly a little baffled himself, but his eyes had sparked bright and his voice was breathy with a sort of stunned and absent wonder.

He seemed completely, unshakably, certain that, despite the ludicrously long odds of such a thing occurring, out of all the billions of people in the world, the other half of his soul just so happened to live practically on his doorstep. Happy too, that, supposedly, his entire future had been upheaved and irrevocably changed when he was only fifteen and his life was tightly circumscribed enough already; centred on school and the farm, its limits stretching no further than fucking Hotton.

Robert couldn't quite understand it then, and undoubtedly doesn't understand it now.  
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Even so, Katie's at Andy's side – if not still, then again – when Robert makes his reluctant return to his erstwhile home, so maybe there really is some truth he comprehends that Robert does not.

And that rankles, somehow, perhaps because now, and more importantly _here_ , all of Robert's old hurts and resentments have bubbled closer to his surface than they have been for years, leaving them feeling raw and exposed. It throws him off-kilter; makes him uneasy and far too reckless to keep a proper hold on his tongue.

Whenever he's embarrassed or angry, Andy's soulmark is quick to fade, obscured by the flush of his rising blood. .

It disappears from view not even half an hour after they clapped eyes on each other for the first time in five years, Robert's brother welcomes him home with a punch.


	3. Chapter 3

Vic was still a child when Robert left the village, her mark not yet grown in.

They had managed to sustain a thin thread of communication over his decade-long absence from her life, if only because Vic would push forward with equal force whenever Robert tried to pull back completely, and find the balance between them again; an equilibrium maintained solely by texts and sporadic phone calls. It was tenuous, precarious, and Vic seemed careful not to overload it. Their conversations were the very definition of small talk; they didn't discuss the important things, they never mentioned the past. She'd never told him what her words said, or even when they first appeared.

He sees them now in brief flashes whenever she hands him a pint or a plate or lays a solicitous hand against his arm, peeking out beneath the sleeve of her chef's whites.

When she sees him looking, she curls her fingers around her wrist in a reflexive act of concealment. And Robert turns his head aside, averts his gaze, because even if someone's mark is written in bold type across the middle of their forehead, you shouldn't stare and you should try not to read it unless they invite you to. It's just the polite thing to do.

He's been back a week when she joins him at his table in the pub at the end of her shift, and though she sits down beside him with a great deal of conviction, she stays quiet for a long while afterwards, the compulsive tip-tap-tap drum of her fingers against the top of the table betraying a measure of nerves or indecision.

Robert waits patiently in silence, and eventually Vic stills, huffs out an irritated-sounding sigh, and then says, "This is stupid. You're my brother. You should know."

She pushes her right sleeve up to her elbow with one sharp, determined jerk of her hand, and holds her arm out towards Robert. It's a show of trust, and he receives it as gently as he can, because he's still relearning her and hasn't quite worked out the geography of her limits yet.

The mark girdles her wrist, front and back, and each letter is so heavily embellished with curlicues that they're indecipherable on first glance. He shifts his chair closer for the second, squints his eyes and tilts his head, even follows the swooping, curling lines with the tip of his finger, but he can't resolve anything meaningful from them.

"I can't make head nor tail of it, either," Vic admits, smiling ruefully.

"Really?" Robert looks again, and then, in an effort to be helpful, suggests, "I think the second letter might be an 'a'."

Vic frowns. "I've always thought it was an 'e'."

"I'm sorry, Vic," Robert says, because he might hate his own words, but at least he _knows_. He can't imagine how aggravating it must be, to have your own skin be a cipher to you.

"Don't be," Vic says with a loose shrug. "I'm not bothered." Her voice drops into the low, intimate tones of a confession. "It's a load of nonsense, anyway, right?"

Her admission is so wonderfully, unexpectedly pragmatic that it shocks laughter from Robert, and encourages him to share his own thereafter.

"Complete and utter bollocks," he says.  
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Robert's meeting in Manchester is with Stuart Hall, one of Lawrence's contacts: an old crony, old money, and decidedly old school.

Robert had booked them a table at one of the city's best restaurants, because Stuart had refused to do business on an empty stomach, but the man seems disinclined to discuss anything but golf even when he's shovelling overpriced food into his maw.

After they've finished their meal, Stuart orders a bottle of wine that costs twice as much as everything they've eaten so far combined, leans back in his seat, and with slow, exaggeratedly deliberate movements, rolls back the sleeves of his shirt.

He keeps one eye on Robert as he does so, his thick, shapeless lips curving into a slight smile, then stretches both his arms out across the table, resting palm up.

It's a mannered and unnatural pose, and Robert has seen others like it often enough to know that Stuart's mark must be written on one of his forearms just like his own is, and that the man is exceedingly proud of it, too.

Normally, he'd take some degree of vindictive pleasure in ignoring such an ostentatious display, but the man is a potential client, so reluctantly, resentfully, he reads:

 _The very instant that I saw you, did my heart fly to your service._

Robert had studied the Tempest for his English Lit GCSE, poring over it in excruciating detail, line by line, so the words are instantly familiar to him.

No doubt Stuart's pride is inspired not only by the striking Gothic script of his mark, but by the thought that his soulmate might be some famous actor or other, despite the odds being much better that they simply dabble in a bit of amateur dramatics down at their local village hall.

"I take it you're a patron of the arts, then," Robert says, smiling ingratiatingly.

"How so?" Stuart asks, his brow furrowing with what appears to be sincere confusion.

"Well, you must go to the theatre a lot."

Stuart's piggy little eyes narrow slightly; suspiciously. "What makes you think that?"

"That's Shakespeare, isn't it," Robert says, "so..."

Stuart splutters something incoherently half-formed, his already florid complexion darkening, and Robert realises that fuck, _fuck_ , no-one's ever told him that before, and he's never cracked a book or even Googled it to check. He'd just assumed, in that bone-deep, careless way that's seems to come so instinctively to the rich, that the words were his alone. That _naturally_ someone, somewhere would be inspired to such a sentiment by him, a person who looks like a slab of corned beef roughly hewn into the shape of a man.

Robert attempts to hold back his smirk, but he's just a little too slow, apparently, because Stuart's expression hardens, he draws back in on himself, and when he next speaks, there's a terse edge to his voice that hadn't been there before.

Their talk is all business then, but ridiculously, irritatingly recursive, an ouroboros conversation, and Robert is no further ahead when they part for the night that he had been at the start.

He returns to his hotel room, drinks a beer and tries to relax, but frustration has made a tight knot of his stomach, thrums against his nerves, and he can't settle, knows he won't be able to sleep, so he goes out again.

He has no particular destination in mind, no particular goal, but he winds up somewhere with low lights and loud music, a glass of something ruinously alcoholic in his hand, and a bloke plastered close against his side.

He's persistent, the bloke, talking and talking and talking at him, even though Robert can barely hear more than one word in ten and hadn't even caught his name beyond the initial plosive. He stands close, one hand curled at Robert's waist, the other braced against his shoulder, and Robert still feels jittery, his skin at least two sizes to small, but it's different kind of tension now and one that he doesn't have the same desire to run from.

Later, back in Robert's hotel room and under the brighter lighting there, the bloke looks much older than he had in the club – grey at his temples, crow's feet around his eyes – and his kisses are filled with teeth and desperation, his fingers clawing painfully deep into Robert's hips.

Later still, after they've fallen into bed and the bloke's mark blazes like a brand across the flushed skin of his chest, he takes hold of Robert's hand, presses it, open-palmed, across the words and says in a rough growl, "Say them."

And Robert does, three times over, gasping them with ever-shortening breath.

"Nothing," the bloke says when they finally part and he rolls away to lie on the far side of the bed, one arm flung over his eyes. "It's always fucking _nothing_."

"What did you expect?" Robert asks.

"I never expect anything anymore. I just keep hoping for _something_." The bloke bangs one fist down hard against the mattress beneath him. "I'm just sick of feeling so... so fucking hollow."

Robert rolls his eyes at his melodramatics. "I don't think that—"

The bloke starts crying, loud, muculent sobs so violent they make his whole body jerk from the force of them, and through his tears tells Robert about the happy relationship that he broke up because he didn't want to settle for someone who wasn't his soulmate, about the jobs that he's lost and the money he's pissed away because he's always on the move, always searching for that other half of his bond.

Robert listens with half an ear and makes noises that he hopes sound suitably sympathetic at appropriate intervals, because there's nothing else he can do. The bloke is completely impervious to suggestions that he leave, and Robert can hardly _throw_ him out. He'd likely cause a scene, draw the sort of attention Robert can ill afford.

For the moment, he's trapped, but he promises himself that if there's a next time – and it's always _if_ even in the privacy of his own mind, although he knows deep down that it's _when_ – he'll be more cautious; pick with a little more care.  
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He really should start taking his own advice.


	4. Chapter 4

Lachlan's unmarked and Chrissie worries: over coffee at breakfast; with a glass of wine in the evening; late at night when the sheets are warm, Robert's head is heavy, and he wants nothing more than to sleep.

"He's still very young, though, isn't he?" she says. "There's plenty of time yet."

The words are firmly spoken, but the gaze she shoots Robert across the mattress is tear-sheened and anxious; a plea for reassurance.

And: "Of course there is," Robert obliges, even though he and Andy had been behind the curve enough at thirteen to be of some concern to their own parents. Fourteen's practically unheard of. One for the medical books.

Despite his agreement, Chrissie's lips are still pursed together, and the lines deep scored across her brow do not fade. She's clearly unconvinced by it, so Robert changes tack and tries again.

"There was a girl in my year at school who... Well, her words were pretty much pornographic," he says. "I definitely wouldn't have wanted my mum to see them, if they were mine. Maybe Lachlan _has_ got his mark already, but he's embarrassed, and keeping it a secret because it's something like that."

"Or like yours," Chrissie says, and though her slight smile suggests that Robert has been able to offer her some small comfort, at least, he can't take any pleasure in his success.

After their first time together, Chrissie had treated his mark like it didn't exist, her eyes glancing over it, her fingers dancing around it, above and below, but never once touching it, as though the words themselves are poison and she might do herself harm if she comes into contact with them.

This reminder that she hasn't forgotten, that she saw and she read and she _knows_ , makes Robert suddenly self-conscious in a way he hasn't felt since that night. He shifts his weight, wraps his marked arm across his body, and presses it down so close and hard against his chest that his wrist and elbow joints start to ache. He nods tightly.

Chrissie's smile thins, trembles, and finally crumbles. "Poor Lucky," she breathes out on a quiet, wavering sigh.  
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For the first month or so after it appeared, Robert had managed to keep his mark hidden.

Even though the temperature had begun to climb as spring quickened into summer, he made sure to always wear long-sleeved shirts, he forged notes from his dad to get out of PE at school, and changed as quickly as he could at home, nervously listening out for the sound of approaching footsteps all the while.

At night and alone, he couldn't bear to have it covered. He would sit on his bed, back against the headboard and knees drawn up to his chest, and stare at the inside of his forearm until his eyes were gritty and dry from not blinking, willing some more words to manifest themselves there or others to fade away. Anything that might alter the meaning of the phrase.

His body betrayed him, nothing changed, and he began to resent this purely hypothetical person, this supposed soulmate, for being the sort of person who would, if they ever met, take against him to such an extent that they would be inspired to say such things to him.

Eventually, he was a little too careless and a little too slow, and his mum caught sight of it. She'd paled, let out a sharp, shocked gasp, and then said, in a soft, heartsick tone, 'Oh, Robert; I'm so sorry,' like she was commiserating with him over a bereavement or some other grievous hurt he'd been dealt.

She'd told his dad that night, who shook his head sadly and clasped Robert's shoulder, and he told Andy, who awkwardly avoided meeting Robert's eye. Victoria sought him out and hugged him, though she was too young to really understand what was going on.

For the next few days, they'd treated him as though he was something fragile they might break apart if they didn't treat him with enough delicacy. Cautious movements, gentle touches, every potentially harsh word bitten back, and it was unsettling enough to begin with, but very quickly became cloying, suffocating.

So Robert kept his arms deliberately bare, forced them to look, and eventually they became so used to seeing the words that they didn't seem to matter in the same way anymore.

As he grew older, he learnt how to take advantage of those reactions, how to exploit the initial moment of pity, the wince, the turned head.

He'd flaunted the mark, right up until he left Emmerdale and had to remember how vulnerable it might make him amongst strangers; had to teach himself all over again how to move with purpose and stand with care, arms crooked and palms in.  
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He can joke about it sometimes, with people who don't take the marks too seriously. Who don't think his own represents some indelible, damning stain on his soul.

People like Vic, who has started – hesitantly at first, but with increasing confidence of late – to tease him with suggestions of who might hold him in enough contempt to be his soulmate.

Tonight's had been Chas Dingle, who certainly does appear to be glaring at him as though he's some manner of vermin who's crawled up onto a stool and ordered itself a pint, but as Robert is inclined to believe her withering scorn – which, to the best of his knowledge, he's done nothing to deserve – is directed instead towards Ross Barton, seated on the table behind them, he dismisses it with a shrug.

"I still reckon my best bet's Andy," he says.

"Rob!" Vic cries out, horrified. "Don't be disgusting."

Robert chuckles. "It doesn't have to be about sex, you know. They say nearly half of all bonds are platonic."

"I know," Vic says, her nose wrinkling like she's caught a whiff of spoilt milk. "But still... God, I wouldn't wish it on either of you."

Robert holds his beer aloft in a toast to that, and after Vic's clinked her glass against his, their talk turns towards other matters. His mind, though stays fixed, though, thoughts circling endlessly around the idea.

Not that it's Andy, per se – because he doesn't want to entertain the possibility any more than Vic does – but that she could be right to look to someone from the village to answer the question his skin poses.

He may have mocked his brother for being parochial when he did the same, but he can't escape the knowledge that there's something about this place, or perhaps about the person he is when he's here, that makes him more impetuous than he is anywhere else, more thoughtless and abrasive; slow to endear himself, quick to make enemies.

That's why, after everything, he's still half convinced it must be Katie, and if not her then someone else who has an old grudge against him, or even a new one.

Like Chas' son, Aaron, with his rough hands and snarled words. There's certainly contempt there when he looks at Robert, but also something far from it in the way his eyes flicker towards Robert's mouth when they speak, and the gazes that linger just a beat too long.

It's something that Robert appreciates, enjoys remembering, but shouldn't want to encourage, because he knows better than to shit on his own doorstep.  
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* * *

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There's a wide gulf between knowing what's right and doing it, though, and Robert feels trapped again, hemmed in by Chrissie's jealousy and her 'I know you's, but he can't flee from it, doesn't want to, so he does what he always does when circumstances conspire like this and steps out of the confines of his life for a while.

Steps out and into a garage, to Aaron, and the culmination promised by those looks and an aborted kiss.

It's almost like being sixteen again, cramped in the back seat of a car, half-clothed. Banged elbows, scuffed knees, and practised rhythms lost to desperation.

It's so far removed from an acre-wide bed and silk sheets that it feels like an escape, and liberating enough to return him to equipoise.

For the time being, at least.


	5. Chapter 5

The next time, there's no forethought, or second guessing, or even really a decision, just anger, a rush of momentum, and then a wire-thin poised instant wherein a single wrong breath or twitch of the fingers could spill them over the edge into more violence.

Robert isn't conscious of making the choice, but when he finally breaks their inertia and pushes forward again, it's into a kiss.

At first, it's like the garage all over again; heavy hands, clashing teeth, and the shared selfishness of need. Somewhere along the line, though – somewhere beyond design or even intention – it becomes something softer and slower; a journey rather than a race to the finish line.

Robert would hardly call it making love but it's not exactly fucking anymore, either.

Whatever it is, it leaves him feeling out of kilter afterwards. Dazed, disorientated, and unsure as to how the hell he managed to get from the pub's back stairs to Aaron's bed, because although he knows he must somehow have travelled from _there_ to _here_ , he can't recall making a single one of the steps in-between now.

As he breathes slow in, steady out, trying to centre himself again – in his mind and his body and this moment – he glances around the room, taking in the details he'd been far too distracted and more gainfully employed to notice earlier.

It's claustrophobically small compared to the rooms he's become used to at Home Farm, its confines seeming all the closer due to the dark wallpaper, and even darker curtains drawn at the window. It's cluttered but not quite messy: posters tacked up to the walls; clothes strewn haphazardly across the back of a chair; a chest of drawers with not one of its drawers closed all the way shut. There are a handful of coins scattered across the top of the bedside table closest to him – the detritus of an emptied pocket – and a small lamp, its shade now set slightly askew.

It reminds him a little of his own boyhood bedroom.

The air smells faintly of beer and some cheap aftershave or other, but more strongly of Aaron and him; both foreign and familiar all at once.

The groan of mattress springs and rustle of fabric as Aaron straightens an arm or uncrooks a leg draws Robert's attention back to him, and thence to the deeper appreciation of his form in repose that their earlier blur of motion and desire had also robbed him of.

He's slimmer than the deceptive bulk of his ubiquitous hoody suggests, but still broad at the shoulders, stocky and well-built, and his skin is startlingly pale against his black sheets, excepting the darker red welts of his scars.

They're feathered with hesitation marks around their lower ends, all angling upwards and to the right. Clearly self-inflicted, and when Aaron notices that his gaze has been caught by them, he drapes a shielding arm across his chest.

The tips of his fingers graze the bandage wrapped around his left biceps, its ends tied in a rough, lopsided bow. Robert wonders whether it conceals a fresher wound or Aaron's mark, which he'd seen no sign of anywhere else on his body otherwise.

He opens his mouth to ask, but the faint background susurrus of chattering voices drifting up from the pub below suddenly grows louder. A sharp spike of sound suggestive of a door being opened downstairs which brings with it the unwelcome reminder that they're far from alone here; that Diane or Chas might make their way up the stairs at any time and it isn't wise for him to linger.

"I should go," Robert says, pushing himself up into a sitting position, already swinging his legs off the bed. "Chrissie'll be waiting for me."

Aaron's eyes meet his for the span of a heartbeat, and then he tips his head back, stares up at the ceiling.

"Right," he says, his voice is completely inflectionless. "I'll see you around, then."  
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* * *

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Twice could be a coincidence, three times is a pattern, and four is something that Robert is unwilling to put a name to or define.

It's something entwined with and bound by investments and evasions and shirked responsibilities. Something so far removed from acre-wide beds and silk sheets that it's the stink of rat's piss, cold, damp stone above and below, and straw digging into his skin.

Robert sighs, arching his spine and swiping at the small of his back in yet another attempt to rid himself of the more persistently prickly strands of the stuff. Aaron follows his movements closely, his eyes lambent and sharply focused, but, to Robert's disappointment, it's clear that it isn't the curve of his body itself that's captured Aaron's interest, but the brief glimpses of his mark it affords.

Because Robert knows there will be a fifth time, probably a sixth – he hasn't planned for it, but it seems pretty much inevitable at this point – and he's already tired of the contortions he has to put himself through to keep it anywhere close to concealed, he relents and stretches out his arm for Aaron to read.

Now it's been deliberately bared to his sight, however, Aaron appears reluctant to look. His gaze skitters away from it, towards the far side of the barn.

"Are you sure?" he asks in a roughened, threadbare voice that's barely louder than a whisper.

"I wouldn't offer if I wasn't sure," Robert says.

And, after hesitating for a second or two longer, Aaron does, his lips moving silently around the words as though testing the feel of them in his mouth even though he doesn't speak them aloud. When he reaches their end, he frowns slightly, but nothing more. He doesn't rationalise, or sympathise, or apologise; he just frowns, and then runs his palm along the words, from the crease of Robert's wrist to the pit of his elbow, before dropping his hand back down to his side again.

Robert thinks he could love him for that, just a little.

"Right," he says, slightly breathless, and the word emerges at a higher pitch than he'd intended as a consequence. He clears his throat and tries again. "Right, I've shown you mine, are you going to show me yours?"

Aaron's fingers twitch towards the bandage that covers the top of his left arm, which answers one question, at least, but he denies Robert the second with a shake of his head.

"No," he says.

"Why not?" Robert asks, and it's not polite, far from proper etiquette, but they're naked together in a barn, sweat still drying on their skin, so it seems a bit late to be worrying about impropriety, in any case.

Aaron certainly doesn't seem offended by the question, merely thoughtful. "It's private, innit," he says.

"So, you keep it covered all the time, then?"

A brisk nod.

"Has _anyone_ ever seen it?"

Another headshake.

"Not even your other..." Here Robert flounders momentarily. 'Boyfriends' is definitely inappropriate; 'lovers' far too fanciful. He eventually recovers with: "The other people you've slept with."

"Them least of all," Aaron says.

"Why? Are you ashamed of it? Are your words like mine?"

Aaron swallows hard, his throat clicking dryly, and he glances aside once more. "No," he says quietly.

"What's your problem, then?"

A faint blush bleeds across the tops of Aaron's cheeks. "They're supposed to come... come from the heart, right?" he says. "How could I ever be sure that they did, if someone had already read them? They could just say them whenever they liked, then, and I'd never know for certain."

"It wouldn't matter if they did, you know," Robert says. "It doesn't _do_ anything if you just say them. Plenty of people have read mine out to me, and nothing changed."

Aaron quirks one eyebrow, clearly dubious. "Really?"

"Yeah. Honestly, they're just words. Nothing magical about them. Here" – Robert turns his arm over again, points towards the words – "I'll show you. You can say them, if you want."

It's a foolish gesture, thoughtlessly made, and Robert regrets it the instant it leaves his mouth. He doesn't want to find out if this time might be different, and nor should he, no matter what the vertiginous spin of his head and the anticipatory pitch of his stomach might be trying to suggest to the contrary.

And Aaron looks, wets his lips and then parts them, but ultimately he says, "No. No, I don't."

Robert honestly doesn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed.


	6. Chapter 6

Andy's mark looks as though it might have faded a little since Katie died, but it's difficult for Robert to tell for sure because his brother never stops touching it, running his fingers compulsively and convulsively across the letters, chafing the skin beneath.

And Robert might have been able to forget Katie, with time and will and determination. If he kept moving forward, never looked back. He's done that before, and maybe he could do it again, but, then again, this is different, it's bigger, and the crimson band around Andy's neck is a constant reminder.

He can't bring Katie back, and he can't change the past, but he's saved Andy from falling along with her once, he'll do it again if he needs to, over and over, and maybe some day it'll finally be enough to absolve him.

There are pinpricks of blood gathered in the hollow of Andy's throat now, a fine tremor racing along the tense arc of his rounded shoulders, and as he shakes, the whisky in the tumbler he's holding sloshes against the side of the glass, threatening to overspill.

It's an expensive single malt, devastatingly strong, and Robert probably shouldn't be encouraging him to drown his sorrows, but whenever Andy takes a sip of it, he sighs afterwards with something that sounds like a close cousin to contentment.

So every time he reaches the bottom of the glass, Robert refills it, and in slow, gradual increments, Andy's back unbows, his expression softens, and his gaze grows distant instead of turned inwards, where Robert can't follow.

"It's like all the colour's gone out of the world," Andy stirs himself to say, and his voice rasps harshly, rusty with disuse. Robert hasn't been keeping track, but he thinks it must have been two hours or more since his brother last spoke. "Everything was brighter with her here. Better. Like... I don't know, I still can't explain it properly, Rob. Not in a way you'd understand." He swallows down a deep gulp of whisky and winces at the burn of it, his lips pulled back from his teeth. "I never managed with Katie."

"What? Why would you need to?"

"She was my soulmate, but..." Andy lifts his shoulders again, up and into a protective hunch around his ears. "But I wasn't hers."

It happens, and by all reports such unequal pairings are far more common than reciprocated bonds, but Robert had never even considered that his brother's might be one of them. Andy always seemed so sure of it; unshakably confident in its strength.

"It was selfish of me to marry her, wasn't it?" Andy says. "I should left her alone, let her be free to find whoever it was, even if... even if it wasn't me."

"No," Robert says, as firm as a command. "No, it wasn't. You didn't force her into it, she could have said no, but she didn't because she loved you. It's not setting, Andy; just realistic. Hardly anyone gets to have that bond. Mum never did. I... I don't."

"And now Katie never will, either."

Andy raises his glass to his lips again, but its empty. He holds it out wordlessly towards Robert, and Robert fills it up to the brim.  
-

* * *

-  
After Katie, Robert's future feels like it's spinning out and away from him, slipping quicksilver slick through his fingers, but he keeps on putting one foot in front of the other, because there's nothing else he can do. He can't go back, so he writes and rewrites himself day after day, piles lie on top of lie until it feels as though his entire life is constructed out of nothing but them.

It's precariously balanced, ramshackle and structurally unsound, and Robert himself lands the first blow that begins to topple it, in the lodge with Aaron bound and bloodied before him.

He'd told Aaron he loved him before, and it had been like speaking a bond; just the right words at just the right time, but he'd meant them anyway, in the best way he knew how.

He means them now, with a gun pointed at Aaron's head and Aaron spitting fragments of Robert's own words at him.

Robert's stomach lurches in sickening fits and starts, anticipation and dread commingled, because it would be horribly, brutally fitting to hear them here and now. The karmic kick in the teeth that he – maybe, perhaps, probably – deserves.

But it never comes, Robert can't shoot, and it's Aaron that brings the entire teetering, creaking edifice crashing down Robert's ears, robbing him of his wife and everything else he'd worked for in an instant, just as he promised he would.

In the aftermath, desperation makes Robert bitter and vicious, because he feels like there's finally nowhere left for him to run to. Trapped more completely than he ever has been before, lashes out like a caged animal, and the shrapnel of his old life keeps on rebounding.

When he gets shot, he's likely the only one left who's taken entirely by surprise by it.  
-

* * *

-  
Robert wakes from his coma to the knowledge that, out of everyone who could possibly despise him enough to do it, it had been Aaron who had pulled the trigger. That he had somehow – and none of it was ever by design; it was never planned – managed to warp the love Aaron had once professed to feel for him into something that twisted and poisonous.

And the knowledge makes him feel even more brittle; fragile in a way that has nothing to do with his atrophied muscles and the straining ache of his still-healing injury. He's more unsure of himself than he ever has been before, and made cautious because of it.

In a strange way, it's comforting to find out that it had really been Andy who'd wanted him dead enough to act on it, as that hurt's sufficiently familiar that he already knows how to deal with it. A relief, and not least because he can buy Aaron's freedom with that truth.

He doesn't expect much when he sees Aaron again after his release from prison, save perhaps a little gratitude for not leaving him to rot in there to save his brother's skin, but Aaron has nothing to give him but spite and more cruelty than Robert had believed him capable of.

Before, he never could have imagined that Aaron could be callous enough to hurl Robert's own words at him with a savagery clearly meant to wound—

 _"I hate you, and nothing you can do is ever going to change that."_

—and then to compound the insult by walking away without so much as a backwards glance afterwards, as though it had meant nothing at all.

It hits Robert like a fist to the solar plexus, knocking the air from his lungs, and even though he wants to, _needs_ to, call out after Aaron's rapidly retreating back, he can't quite catch sufficient breath to do so.

The sharp lancing pain doesn't subside, even after Robert curls his entire body around it, hands braced on his thighs and gasping. And, at first, he thinks it must be some delayed complication from his operation; a deep infection, internal bleeding.

But then his mark flares white hot, scorching through his flesh all the way down to the bone, and he realises it might be something much, much worse.


	7. Chapter 7

Robert's entire world narrows down to the inside of his own eyelids and the throb of his mark, which pulses with the same pitter-pat trip-lurching beat as his heart.

He loses all sense of place and time to it, and minutes or hours or even days might have passed before he hears a voice saying, "Are you okay?"

It's distorted by the allegro-rhythmic surge of his own blood, drumming in his ears, but clearly Vic's voice, and it's clearly Vic's hand, taking gentle hold of his elbow. Her fingers bore into his flesh like augers, and bile floods his mouth, forcing out the last of the air still trapped there.

"You look terrible." Vic's hand slips from his arm to the small of his back, where she grinds out a soothing circle with the heel of her palm. "I think you need to lie down."

She urges him forward. Robert doesn't protest because he _can't_ protest, even though each step rattles through his bones and pulls every muscle in his body achingly tight.

He grits his teeth against it, and shivers and sweats and endures, and eventually there's the click-swoosh of an opening door, and then stairs, and finally a bed, whose frame groans in protest when Vic eases Robert down onto it.

The mattress sags in the middle, a broken spring digs into the nape of his neck: the narrow bed at Keepers Cottage which is temporarily his own. It's never seemed more welcoming before, and Robert spreads out across it gratefully.

He cautiously slits open his eyes, and the floral patterns on the wallpaper and the duvet cover blur into a sickening, chaotic swirl of clashing colours. He turns his gaze up to the uncomplicated white of the ceiling. It doesn't help lessen the nausea, but the crushing pressure bearing down on the base of his skull does subside slightly.

"Do you want me to ring Dr Bailey?" Vic asks, and she still sounds as if she's talking to him from the bottom of a deep well; muffled and distant.

It takes some effort and a great deal of concentration, but Robert manages to shake his head a little. He doubts this is something a doctor could cure.

Vic lays a hand at his brow, fingertips like knife blades brushing back his hair. "What happened to you, Rob?"

Robert takes a deep breath to answer, but it catches hard behind his ribs and he can't seem to force it back out again, never mind any words. His chest swells with it, then his throat, and his head. The mattress sinks beneath him again, the ceiling flies up and away, and he's falling—  
-

* * *

-  
—back into sleep made fitful by dreams filled with half-glimpsed shadowy figures, abrupt movement, and discordant noise.

Robert wakes with a start when the pain of his mark crescendos once more. It feels as though a heated needle is being dragged along it, slowly and methodically marking out his letters anew, line by agonising line.

He fumbles for the bedside lamp, switches it on, and then hurriedly rolls back his right sleeve. But his vision's still swimming, flickering in and out of focus, and he can barely make out the outline of his arm clearly, never mind his words.

He's not aware of making any sort of a sound in response, but if the frenzied speed with which Vic suddenly bursts into his room is anything to go by, he might well have been screaming.

"Rob," she says, her voice turned shrill with panic. "Rob, are you—"

"My mark," Robert says, forcing the words out through gritted teeth. "Does it... Does it look any different?"

Vic bows her head over his arm. "No, it looks just the same as it always does."

"It _feels_ different," Robert insists.

Vic presses her hand against the mark, just a brief, glancing touch, swiftly withdrawn, but it burns deep, nonetheless.

"Maybe it does to you," she says, "but it feels just the same to me." She shifts her weight uneasily, and then adds, in the mild, hushed tone of someone trying to calm a spooked animal, "Has someone said your words?"

"Yes," Robert says, because it seems a little too late to try and pretend otherwise now. To her, at least.

For a long moment, Vic doesn't say anything more, and Robert thinks she might be waiting for him to tell her who the speaker had been, but as that is a secret he _is_ still able keep, he curls his lips around his teeth, presses them tight together, and stays silent too.

Eventually, Vic relents, and, with a heavy sigh, takes loose hold of his hand. "I've never heard of it making someone ill."

No, this is the point in the film where the strings rise and the music swells. The point in the book where the prose becomes florid or breathless. It's Andy with his sparkling eyes, wide smile, and excitement-thinned voice saying, 'I can't explain it; it's like nothing I've ever felt before.'

Robert hasn't felt like _this_ before, either, but as his brother had been relentlessly fucking _gleeful_ about the formation of his own bond, he can't imagine that their experiences of it are anything approaching the same.

He's always suspected there might be something wrong with his mark; something warped and broken. Maybe that extends to the bond it's formed for him, as well.

But Vic looks anxious enough already, her breathing a little too shallow and her complexion just a little too pale, so he says, "Perhaps it does, and people just don't like to talk about it. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about."  
-

* * *

-  
Vic sits beside him until he dozes off again, and when he wakes for a second time, she presents him with a cup of coffee and a boiled egg and soldiers, just like their mum used to make.

He eats a couple of bites to show willing, but it tastes like nothing but dust in his mouth and tears at his throat when he swallows it down. The coffee's no better, and all he can really stomach is water.

He drinks glass after glass after glass of it, and the sweat pours out of him, soaking through his sheets. He kicks them away from him time and again, but time and again he has to pull them back over him, when the chills set in.

He'd never thought to ask Vic to keep the real cause of his illness to herself, but she seems to know, anyway. He hears her telling Adam that he has the flu, which he's thankful for, and even more so when Adam gives his room a wide berth as a consequence.

The rest of the day passes in a haze, punctuated only by Vic bringing him eggy bread at lunchtime and beans on toast at tea. More comfort food, but Robert can't stand the smell or even the sight of it.

"I'm sorry, Vic," he says, turning his head from it. "I can't."

"It's okay," Vic says, putting her tray down on top of the chest of drawers which marks the furthest point away from Robert in the small room. "I thought you probably still wouldn't feel up to eating, but I had to try." She perches on the end of the bed, starts smoothing the rumpled duvet back over his exposed feet. "Rob, I've been reading some stuff, and..."

"And...?" Robert prompts when she trails into silence.

"Other people do get sick like this sometimes," Vic says. "They reckon it happens when you reject the bond."

Robert hadn't had the time or opportunity to make the conscious choice to do so, but, subconsciously, perhaps he always would have rejected it. He's never liked the idea that a force entirely outside his control could permanently tie – and, apparently, _has_ tied – him to someone else.

Perhaps something in his mind or body or fucking _soul_ is rebelling against that.

Or it might be because the person that's wrong. Not that it's Aaron, per se, but an Aaron that hates him. He never would have chosen that for himself, or for them.

"Did that stuff you read say how to fix this?" he asks.

"No." Vic's lips curve up into a small smile. "I suppose you'll just have to try _not_ rejecting it."

And, for what feels like hours, Robert does try. He tries to persuade himself that he's pleased that this happened, that he's glad that it's Aaron, that the bond...

He can never get past the bond as he's not even sure what or where that is. If it's the fever, queasiness, and aching joints, he certainly doesn't want it. There must be something else there, though. Something he hasn't been able to find yet, because he can't imagine anyone ever wanting to find their soulmate if that's all there is.

It seems there's only one way to know for sure. And probably only one way to ever accept the bond, too.  
-

* * *

-  
The next morning, he shoos Vic off to work against her protests that she can take another day off to look after him, and then drags himself out of bed, dresses in his loosest, most comfortable clothes, and stumbles his way over to the pub.

Thankfully, Aaron's alone in the back room when Robert lets himself in, and, even more fortuitously, he doesn't even look up from his bacon sandwich when Robert approaches him.

It makes it easier. Robert doesn't think he could he could say the word if he had to meet Aaron's eyes as he did so.

"You're my..."

He can't do it, either way. It's irrational, fairy tale nonsense, and he shouldn't be giving it the credence of—

"Soulmate." He forces it out in a sudden rush of bloody-minded determination to just get it over and done with.

Aaron glances towards him, just for a split-second, before returning his attention to his plate again. "I know," he says, addressing the words towards the tabletop.

"What? How?"

"I've read your words, remember? I knew pretty much as soon as I said them." Aaron picks at the crust of his sandwich, pulling it to shreds. "I never would have done it if I was thinking straight."

"Right," Robert says. "Of course."

And then he waits; expectantly, because Aaron knows and that ridiculous word is out there, acknowledged, between them.

But nothing changes. His head and his heart are still pounding, every inch of his body still burns. There's a staticky feeling building, low in the pit of his stomach, but there's nothing comforting about it, nothing pleasurable, so it's more than likely just nerves.

"Oh," he sighs out, disappointed, "that didn't work."

"What didn't?"

Aaron's eyebrows rise infinitesimally, betraying some small measure of interest that Robert finds he wants to encourage.

"My bond" – that word's no less ridiculous, and Robert has to force it out, too – "isn't... There's something wrong with it. It's making me ill, and apparently that can happen if you don't accept it. I thought telling you might be enough, but..." He shrugs one shoulder. "It seems not."

"You do still look like shit," Aaron says, after giving him another quick glance.

"I feel like it, too," Robert says with an equally forced laugh.

Aaron frowns, opens his mouth as if to say something more, but seemingly thinks better of it. Instead, he gets to his feet, grabs his coat, and as he's striding across the room, past Robert, he tosses out over his shoulder. "I've got to get to..."

His destination is doomed to remain a mystery, as he's through the door and away before he finishes his sentence.  
-

* * *

-  
An hour or so later, when Robert has resigned himself to an afternoon of shivering and sweating on the sofa in the living room because his trip to and from the pub had exhausted what little reserves he had left, and without Vic to help him he can't hope to manage the stairs, he's startled by a knock at the front door.

The buzz in his stomach that he'd dismissed with barely a thought earlier returns at the sound, and twice may well be a coincidence, but he's fairly certain this one is meaningful.

Just as he's fairly certain now that his visitor's Aaron.  
-

* * *

-  
Aaron doesn't wait for Robert to answer his knock, and lets himself into the cottage. His footsteps are quick and sure as he strides along the hallway, but pause, uncertain, when he reaches the living room doorway.

He sways back from crossing its threshold, scans the room warily, glances over his shoulder.

"Vic and Adam aren't here," Robert tells him. "They're still out at work."

"Good," Aaron says, staring down at his feet now. He slides the right one into the room and out again, and then does the same the left. "I wanted to speak to you on your own."

The shuffling dance of indecision he was performing ends with those words and he retreats to the kitchen, returning a moment later with two cans of beer, fresh from the fridge. He hands one to Robert, and opens the other, immediately drinks deep from it.

Robert's throat is sore, parched desert dry, but his gorge rises just at the thought of doing the same. He sets his own can down on the floor, and, when he straightens up again, Aaron sits down beside him, keeping a careful handsbreadth of distance between their bodies.

The buzzing intensifies; just a little, Robert wouldn't even have noticed if he hadn't been half expecting it to happen. He closes his eyes and concentrates on the barely-there sensation. It's not good or bad. It's not really much of anything, his bond.

Even naming it changes nothing. His mark still tears at his skin like it's trying to pull free of him.

When he opens his eyes again, Aaron is watching him; obliquely, out of the corner of his eye, but intent all the same.

"Are you feeling any better?" he asks. "After... After what we talked about earlier."

"Not at all."

Aaron gives a tight nod, swallows heavily. "I think that might be my fault." He taps out an irregular tattoo against the side of his can, blunt fingernails ticking across the metal. "I'm the one rejecting the bond, not you."

Whisky-fuelled and strung out on grief, Andy had not only confessed to Robert that his bond with Katie had been unreciprocated, but that she'd never been able to feel it, either. He'd tried and she'd tried, but it'd always remained a blank spot between them. This massive, life-altering thing that Andy claimed was the very core and heart of him, and she couldn't even begin to touch it.

"I don't think that's possible," Robert says.

Aaron's lips and eyebrows both pinch tight together, and he shivers ever so slightly. "I can't," he whispers. "I can't say it. I'll just have to..."

As soon as Aaron starts to unzip his hoody, Robert knows.

He should probably tell Aaron to stop there, that he doesn't need to see. But he _wants_ to. He's wanted that for a long time, so he stays quiet, his gaze fixed avidly on Aaron's hands and his heart beating double-time in his chest.

Aaron shrugs the hoody from his shoulders, exposing the bandage covering the top of his left arm, and then he hesitates, just for an instant, before unwrapping it with brisk, economical flicks of his wrist.

He presents his mark to Robert without comment, and at first, all Robert can see is the shape of it, arranged in a block running down the centre of his biceps.

He then studies the letters themselves. They're blocky, too; all upper case, neatly formed and regularly spaced. Some of them are bisected by scars – f _eathered with hesitation marks around their lower ends; all angling upwards and to the right; obviously clearly self-inflicted_ – but their lines are still unbroken and their colour's still true.

Finally, and much more reluctantly, he reads:

 **YOU'RE**  
 **LITERALLY**  
 **A**  
 **FAILURE**  
 **AT**  
 **EVERYTHING**

He can't bear to look at the words for long, and he wrenches his head aside, stammering out, "I didn't mean it."

"Of course you did," Aaron says, his voice coarsened to a low, bass growl. "Nothing happens if you don't mean it. You told me so yourself."

Aaron's rejection had stung that day in the scrap yard, and Robert had lashed out in instinctive, unthinking retaliation as he always does. He'd meant the words to hurt, but he hadn't believed in them. Not really.

He tries to explain that, but only manages to get as far as, "I," before Aaron interrupts him with: "I don't want to talk about it."

Aaron leans back then, his head falling with a dull thump against the back of the sofa. He's shaking with more violence now, and Robert begins to think that this so-called, sorry excuse for a bond might be harming him, as well.

"Why didn't you tell me about... about any of this?" he asks.

Aaron laughs humourlessly. "And when could I have told you about it, exactly? When you were in a coma? When I was in prison?" He lurches forward again suddenly, meets Robert's eyes directly for the first time since he entered the room. "I _felt_ you get shot, Robert. And after that I... I tried to make it small. I tried to make it not matter, and it did work, for a while. Until the other day, outside the pub, then it changed all over again."

As he was speaking, Aaron had splayed his hand out against his own chest, as though in remembered pain, and now, perhaps unwittingly, he reaches out to touch the same spot on Robert's.

He collects himself just in time, stops just short, but only of pressing against Robert's still-healing scar. His fingertips do brush against the front of Robert's T-shirt, though, and Robert can feel a weak echo of the sensation tingling across his own: the fever-heated warmth of it; the soft, smooth texture.

"What the fuck?" Aaron says, his eyes shocked wide and glassy.

He doesn't wait for Robert to answer – not that Robert has one to give, anyway – before moving his hand again, skirting unerringly around the edge of the swollen flesh surrounding the scar, and then up towards Robert's collarbone, his breath escaping in short, airy gasps through his slightly parted lips all the while.

Robert can feel the pressure of the touch most strongly, but beneath that there's the dip and rise undulations of his own ribs, and, even more faintly, the quickening lub dub rhythm of Aaron's heartbeat.

The buzz grows again, expands, and Robert reaches out for Aaron, too, wondering if he might be able to feel it now, through him.

But Aaron rears away from him; barks out, "Don't." He screws his eyes closed momentarily, exhales sharply through his nose. "I just wanted to see if I could help... I don't want this. I don't want _any_ of it."

He scowls at Robert then, as if he's to blame for whatever the fuck _this_ is, and scrambles to his feet, his movements jerky and uncoordinated. He takes a couple of steps towards the door, then pauses, swivels on his heel, and says, "You should keep your distance now, Robert. Find a way to make it not matter to you, too."  
-

* * *

-  
 **Notes:**

-  
I'm currently writing a sequel to this fic, and have planned several others in the same series, too.


End file.
